This document describes how to set up Ampache on an Arch Linux LAMP server. Ampache is a Web-based Audio file manager. It is implemented with MySQL, and PHP. It allows you to view, edit, and play your audio files via the web. It has support for playlists, artist and album views, album art, random play, playback via Http/On the Fly Transcoding and Downsampling, Ampache is excellent if you want to be able to listen to your music collection anywhere.

This document describes how to set up Ampache on an Arch Linux LAMP server. Ampache is a Web-based Audio file manager. It is implemented with MySQL, and PHP. It allows you to view, edit, and play your audio files via the web. It has support for playlists, artist and album views, album art, random play, playback via Http/On the Fly Transcoding and Downsampling, Ampache is excellent if you want to be able to listen to your music collection anywhere.

PHP will be installed as a dependency of ampache. You will need to edit the PHP configuration file /etc/php/php.ini in order to enable iconv support for ampache.

−

Uncomment the ;extension=iconv.so line in the php.ini file. To enable the iconv support for ampache

+

Uncomment (remove the initial semi-colon from) the following line in the php.ini file:

−

# vi /etc/php/php.ini

+

;extension=iconv.so

−

When Ampache is installed to you webroot, point your browser to [http://localhost/ampache http://localhost/ampache].

+

When Ampache is installed, point your browser to [http://localhost/ampache http://localhost/ampache] (substitute the address of your Ampache server for localhost if you didn't install it locally).

If you encounter any problems here, use http://localhost/ampache/test.php to double check your configuration.

If you encounter any problems here, use http://localhost/ampache/test.php to double check your configuration.

Line 41:

Line 42:

* On the third page you're going to edit the ampache.cfg.php file

* On the third page you're going to edit the ampache.cfg.php file

−

** Web Path - Your patch to ampache.

+

** Web Path - Your path to ampache.

** Desired Database Name - Same as on the second page.

** Desired Database Name - Same as on the second page.

** MySQL Hostname - localhost.

** MySQL Hostname - localhost.

Revision as of 14:30, 9 July 2012

This document describes how to set up Ampache on an Arch Linux LAMP server. Ampache is a Web-based Audio file manager. It is implemented with MySQL, and PHP. It allows you to view, edit, and play your audio files via the web. It has support for playlists, artist and album views, album art, random play, playback via Http/On the Fly Transcoding and Downsampling, Ampache is excellent if you want to be able to listen to your music collection anywhere.

Troubleshooting

If you're still having problems check your Open basedir setting in php.ini. You can either comment out the open_basedir all together or add the directory in which your files reside. The second option is preferred. To comment out a line all you need to do is add a semicolon at the beginning of the line.

;open_basedir = /srv/http/:/home/:/tmp/:/usr/share/pear/

Tips & Tricks

Logging

Is something not working as intended? Let's get some logging going!

There are five levels of logging in Ampache, 5 being the highest.

To enable logging you just need to set the debug value to true and set debug_level to your desired level.

; Debug
; If this is enabled Ampache will get really chatty
; warning this can crash browser during catalog builds due to
; the amount of text that is dumped out this will also cause
; ampache to write to the log file
; DEFAULT: false
debug = "true"
; Debug Level
; This should always be set in conjunction with the
; debug option, it defines how prolific you want the
; debugging in ampache to be. values are 1-5.
; 1 == Errors only
; 2 == Error + Failures (login attempts etc.)
; 3 == ??
; 4 == ?? (Profit!)
; 5 == Information (cataloging progress etc.)
; DEFAULT: 5
debug_level = 5

Last thing you'll have to do is specify where you want the log to reside. Remember that the http user needs write permissons to the file.

; Path to Log File
; This defines where you want ampache to log events to
; this will only happen if debug is turned on. Do not
; include trailing slash. You will need to make sure that
; your HTTP server has write access to the specified directory
; DEFAULT: NULL
log_path = "/var/log/ampache"

Transcoding

If you want to use Ampache's on the fly transcoding you'll need the packages specified in config/ampache.cfg, the packages needed for transcoding the most common audio file formats are listed in Ampache stable's .install file. You'll also need to configure the specific lines in ampache.cfg.

The following example enables m4a transcoding to mp3.

Please note that you'll need both lame, used for all audio file formats, and faad, m4a specific, installed.

Using with Amarok

Using the ampache web interface, we need to allow API access to Ampache from our local network. To do this go to the Admin tab and then click on Show Acls. Find Add API / RPC Host and click on it.
Name your ACL Entry, ("My Network" for ex). If you want API + Streaming + Web Interface access pick RPC + All under type.

In amarok, go to Settings and then Services. Make sure the Ampache Service is enabled and then click Settings button on Ampache plugin.

Name : This is an internal name for Amarok, up to you.

Server : This is the fully qualified address for your Ampache server including the http://. For example, a valid server would look like http://ampache.org/demo.